KUALA LUMPUR – Kimora Lee, an ex-wife of former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner, now claims she is the owner of a portion of shares of energy drink company Celsius Holdings that was forfeited as part of his 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) plea deal.
She has applied to a federal court in Brooklyn, New York of her intentions to establish her ownership of 892,732 shares in Celsius Holdings, which is now valued at US$93 million (RM412.6 million), was wrongly included in the forfeiture order against Leissner for 3.3 million shares.
She also claimed that the 892,732 shares were bought with earnings from her modelling career and her Baby Phat clothing line, reported Bloomberg.
“Lee has established that she is a bona fide purchaser for value of the Celsius shares,” according to the court documents she filed.
“Leissner did not contribute any funds to the purchase of the Celsius shares and did not own the Celsius shares.
“The fact that the Celsius shares were used as collateral for Leissner’s bond does not mean that there is a connection between Leissner’s offences and those shares which were seized.”
Celsius shares were traded at US$104.26 on Friday (US time), making the 3.3 million shares worth more than US$344 million.
Lee and Leissner were married in 2014 but were estranged when he became a prosecution witness in the trial against former Goldman subordinate Roger Ng.
Yesterday, Ng filed a motion in the Brooklyn court to say he was the owner of more than 1.45 million Celsius shares which Leissner forfeited. Ng had joined Celsius as managing director for Asia after leaving Goldman.
Leissner also previously revealed that he was married to two women simultaneously – one being Lee and the other being Hong Kong businesswoman Judy Chan.
He said to marry Simmons, he provided a fake divorce decree in 2014, a similar modus operandi he used when he wanted to marry Chan in 2000.
In March this year, US district judge Margo Brodie had ordered Leissner to surrender the assets as part of his 2018 guilty plea to money laundering and bribery charges related to 1MDB.
Once Goldman’s Southeast Asia chairman, Leissner was the highest-ranking of its bankers to plead guilty to the scheme to steal from 1MDB in return for more than US$60 million in kickbacks.
Ownership of Celsius, however, remains in disrepute after Ng in November last year filed a complaint in Manhattan court accusing Leissner of “repeatedly lying” to steal Ng’s investment in two companies – Celsius and artificial intelligence company Sentient Technologies.
Brodie said the Celsius shares were being held at a JPMorgan Chase & Co account in Leissner’s former wife’s name, Kimora Lee, adding that anyone who asserted legal interest in the shares might file a petition with the court.
At the time, prosecutors also sought for a forfeiture order against Ng to give up the US$35.1 million that they said he earned in the scheme.
Ng recently was sentenced to 10 years in prison and is scheduled to begin his prison term in August. – The Vibes, May 6, 2023
